{"id":21791,"date":"2025-02-07T17:52:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T18:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21791"},"modified":"2025-02-07T19:26:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T19:26:01","slug":"a-fungus-that-turns-spiders-into-zombies-is-a-discovery-to-haunt-your-nightmares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21791","title":{"rendered":"A Fungus That Turns Spiders Into Zombies Is a Discovery to Haunt Your Nightmares"},"content":{"rendered":"

A BBC documentary crew in Northern Ireland stumbled upon a fungus that hijacks spiders in an arachnid version of \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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An abandoned gunpowder storage shed<\/a> pokes out from a small mound of earth in what\u2019s now a nature preserve in Northern Ireland. It is the perfect place for a spider: semi-subterranean, cool and dark. But in 2021, a crew working on a BBC nature program<\/a> found more than an average arachnid lurking there. They spotted a dead spider with a lacy white fungus erupting from its body.<\/p>\n

The fungus, scientists announced in a paper published last month in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution<\/a>, is a newly discovered species that spreads its spore by hijacking a spider and turning the unlucky arachnid into a zombie. This evolutionary strategy has been made famous by the zombie ant fungus Ophiocordyceps<\/a>, which inspired the video game<\/a> and HBO show \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d<\/a> This spider version is only distantly related to that fungus.<\/p>\n

Volunteers at the Castle Espie Wetland Centre near Belfast were assisting the BBC filmmakers when they noticed the infected spider. Pictures of the specimen made their way to Harry Evans, an emeritus fellow at CAB International, a nonprofit organization focusing on agricultural and environmental research. \u201cI posited that it was an unknown or unusual species and requested the specimen once the filming had finished,\u201d Dr. Evans, an author of the paper, said.<\/p>\n

When the BBC program aired, Tim Fogg, a cave explorer, reached out to Dr. Evans to say that he had observed a similar fungus in Irish caves. Each of the five infected spiders Mr. Fogg collected was engulfed by a tiny, tangled thicket of fungi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jo\u00e3o Ara\u00fajo, an author of the paper and a curator of mycology at the Denmark Natural History Museum, said he and his colleagues believe that when a spore lands on a spider, the fungus sprouts a root-like structure called a germ tube that drills into the arachnid\u2019s exoskeleton. Once inside, the fungus buds and multiplies, Dr. Ara\u00fajo said, \u201ctaking over basically almost the entire body of the spider.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Gibellula attenboroughii on orb-weaving spiders found in Irish caves, and a microscope view of the fungus. <\/span>Tim Fogg; Evans et al., FUSE, 2025; Harry Evans<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A BBC documentary crew in Northern Ireland stumbled upon a fungus that hijacks spiders in an arachnid version of \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201dAn abandoned gunpowder storage shed pokes out from a small mound of earth in what\u2019s now a nature preserve in Northern Ireland. It is the perfect place for a spider: semi-subterranean, cool and dark. But in 2021, a crew working on a BBC nature program found more than an average arachnid lurking there. They spotted a dead spider with a lacy white fungus erupting from its body.The fungus, scientists announced in a paper published last month in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution, is a newly discovered species that spreads its spore by hijacking a spider and turning the unlucky arachnid into a zombie. This evolutionary strategy has been made famous by the zombie ant fungus Ophiocordyceps, which inspired the video game and HBO show \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d This spider version is only distantly related to that fungus.Volunteers at the Castle Espie Wetland Centre near Belfast were assisting the BBC filmmakers when they noticed the infected spider. Pictures of the specimen made their way to Harry Evans, an emeritus fellow at CAB International, a nonprofit organization focusing on agricultural and environmental research. \u201cI posited that it was an unknown or unusual species and requested the specimen once the filming had finished,\u201d Dr. Evans, an author of the paper, said.When the BBC program aired, Tim Fogg, a cave explorer, reached out to Dr. Evans to say that he had observed a similar fungus in Irish caves. Each of the five infected spiders Mr. Fogg collected was engulfed by a tiny, tangled thicket of fungi.Jo\u00e3o Ara\u00fajo, an author of the paper and a curator of mycology at the Denmark Natural History Museum, said he and his colleagues believe that when a spore lands on a spider, the fungus sprouts a root-like structure called a germ tube that drills into the arachnid\u2019s exoskeleton. Once inside, the fungus buds and multiplies, Dr. Ara\u00fajo said, \u201ctaking over basically almost the entire body of the spider.\u201dGibellula attenboroughii on orb-weaving spiders found in Irish caves, and a microscope view of the fungus. Tim Fogg; Evans et al., FUSE, 2025; Harry EvansWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21793,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21797,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21791\/revisions\/21797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}